Thank you to all who wrote letters encouraging the academy to end this program!

September 2008 Update:
Although the Canandaigua Academy reversed its earlier decision to eliminate the chicken project and plans to continue to offer it as part of its curriculum, lack of permission from the State Education Department to carry out acts of animal slaughter as an academic exercise is reportedly impeding the project, at least temporarily. School officials say that the high school students are “studying the impact of growing food” by slaughtering the birds that they raise from chicks.

Below you will find a September news article, a New York law that addresses the use of live animals in the schools, and the State Education Department’s information page on applying for a waiver.

ISSUE:
(Ontario County, NY) The Canandaigua Academy’s hands-on chicken slaughter project, part of the school’s curriculum for the last 3 years, was canceled earlier this spring following a public outpouring of objections. The ecology class project had students raising chicks in pens and ultimately slaughtering, plucking, gutting, and barbecuing them. While the supervising teacher argued that the class serves to “educate people to the true cost of today’s diet,” the inherent violence of the meat industry does not justify its reenactment in our classrooms.